A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Years and years later, of course, it came out that these babies had been born in detention centers. The regime gave them to military families who were childless. Or couples sympathetic to Pinochet. Many were smuggled to Argentina and placed with families there.

  You should try contacting the AFDD—Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos. Or perhaps the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. They’ve done incredible work locating and reuniting children and grandchildren who were stolen during the Argentinian dictatorship. They might be able to help you. Also look into the Servicio Medical-Legal in Santiago.

  I’m so sorry for what’s befallen your family. I wish you all the luck in finding some closure to this.

  The next rabbit hole Penny fell down was the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which had indexed portions of Chile’s civil registry, but only between 1885 and 1932. Forty years too early for Penny’s purposes. But LDS also indexed Chile’s cemetery records, and Penny searched the database for male babies born in 1973.

  “Why only males?” she said aloud, hands poised above the keyboard.

  Her baby could’ve been a girl. Should she cast a wide net and narrow it? Or a narrow net and widen it?

  “Start with the simplest solution.”

  She was talking to herself a lot lately.

  “Boys who were born and died in November of 1973. Search it.”

  Why are you looking for dead babies?

  “Because I have to start somewhere.”

  Scrolling through the results, her eyes stuttered on one entry: Diana Cecilia Abarca Sepúlveda, died 15 Jan 1973

  Sepúlveda. Same surname as Ysidro. As common as Smith or Jones, but it teased her.

  Look at me. I’m a sign.

  She exported the results into a spreadsheet. She sorted. Filtered. Narrowed it down to a list of eight male names before realizing all of them died in Valparaiso.

  She scanned the “City” column, unable to believe. The database had no records of infant boy deaths in Santiago in the entire month of November.

  How could that be?

  She counted seventy-two infant boys buried in Santiago in January of 1973. Eight buried in June. Those were the only two months showing male deaths. January and June.

  “Huh.”

  A big exhaled sigh. She still had no idea what she was looking for but this wasn’t it.

  Her brows furrowed at a cluster of line items at the bottom of her spreadsheet. Fourteen children with birth dates, but no death dates.

  “What are they doing in cemetery records?”

  Her cursor hovered over the name Patricio Agustín Muñoz Pino, born 14 November 1973 in Santiago. Eleven days before Penny gave birth to Jude. Or the baby she thought was Jude.

  “Jude Lite,” she mumbled, and then felt terrible.

  She went back to the online results and clicked on the image attached to the record for Patricio Pino. It was scanned sideways so she had to put her ear on her shoulder to read it.

  NACIMIENTO across the top section. The fields for Nombre, Apellidos and Fecha de Nacimiento filled out by hand.

  DEFUNCIÓN across the bottom section—death. No fields filled out.

  A general cemetery record for a male born in Santiago in November of 1973.

  But no death information.

  Why would a cemetery record have no death information?

  He was born and then he disappeared?

  “Was he stillborn?”

  She stared at the blank fields where parents’ names ought to have been. Her head ached with frustration and uselessness.

  “I’m trying,” she whispered. “I’m trying to find you.”

  “Pen,” Cleon said softly behind her. “Querida, it’s time to stop. Come to bed.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Shut it down now.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

  You build a simple rowboat and paint it red. Your brush dips into candy-apple glossiness. Ribbons of crimson satin dribble off the rim of the can. The brush glides like magic across the pale boards.

  Your boat must be on a river. At once you’re provided with millions of mosaic tiles in every conceivable shade of blue, and you create a serpentine path across the floor, one cobalt, azure, turquoise or lapis square at a time.

  Tangerine trees are brought from your father’s nursery. You dig each one into its place beside the river, watering them with handfuls of glass tiles. The smell of paint is replaced with tangy citrus as the trees burst into bud, blossom and fruit.

  Supplies of every medium appear and disappear as you demand. You take thousands of labels off jars of marmalade and decoupage them to the walls. Then you paint more tangerine trees over the labels, extending the orchard toward a horizon. See, you have no practical skills, but you’ve inherited an eye from the Tholets. It’s intention that matters in this fortress, not execution. You know what it’s supposed to look like. Your imagination and the Fab Four do the rest.

  Behind one tree you paint a girl. You take a long time and a single-hair brush to put a million geometric shapes into the irises of her eyes.

  But you need to hurry. It will be your turn soon.

  Fabulous rolls of yellow and green cellophane unfurl across the floor. You fashion petals from wire, twisting and cutting and shaping before wrapping them into lemon and lime bouquets. Bales of thicker wire to make stems, and soon a tunnel of flowers arches over the blue mosaic river. The girl from the tangerine grove darts among them. She looks back, calling you.

  They’re calling you.

  Her eyes have swallowed the sun.

  Your hands are bound but your fingers curl to tap three drumbeats on your palm.

  …

  …

  …

  And you’re gone.

  (Lucy.

  In the sky.

  With diamonds…)

  Jude didn’t ask Tej to move in and Tej, whose housing was temporary, didn’t hint he wanted to move in. They divided the nights easily, with the lion’s share spent at Jude’s place because he had to practice.

  Tej watched Jude play piano with narrowed eyes and a wary expression. Musical scores fascinated and baffled him. He didn’t understand how Jude could read the horizontal chaos of dots and squiggles and notations. Couldn’t grasp how the right hand was in one clef—“The fuck is a clef?”—and the left in another, and Jude read both simultaneously.

  “It’s like reading French with your right eye and German with your left,” he said. “That is insane to me.”

  He sounded almost offended by Jude’s ability to read music.

  “And why is it written sideways?” he said, arms crossed. “Why don’t the lines—”

  “The staff.”

  “Excuse fucking me, why isn’t the staff printed vertically?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tej gave the sheet music a quarter turn. “There. See? Now the left-hand part is, wait for it, on the left. And the right-hand part is on the right. Doesn’t that make more sense?”

  “No.”

  Tej’s hands dropped to his sides. “The whole thing is bananas.”

  He puttered around downstairs while Jude practiced, occasionally calling up, “What’s this? What are you playing now?”

  “Glazunov,” Jude called back.

  Or Chopin.

  Bach.

  Satie.

  Stravinsky.

  Rachmaninoff.

  Tchaikovsky.

  Sometimes Tej turned the piano bench perpendicular to the keys so he could sit behind Jude at the short end. He wrapped arms around Jude’s waist and pressed his cheek between Jude’s shoulder blades, moving along with him through the phrases. “I like hearing the music through your body.”

  Jude leaned back on him, content t
o the point of speechless. Thinking, simply, This is nice.

  He rarely had to set an alarm clock on weekday mornings anymore. He woke up to the coffee grinder whirring, either in his kitchen or Tej’s, depending on where they spent the night. He lay in bed, listening to the scuff of Tej’s slippers, the mumble of him talking to the cat (if they were at his place). Faucet running. Drawers and fridge opening and closing. Steamy, fragrant bubbling and more talking to the cat. The drag of a stirred spoon against the bottom of a mug. Three revolutions followed by two taps on the side, then the clink of the spoon on the counter. Always the same. Scuffed footsteps back to the bedroom and the gentle thump as Tej set the cup on the bedside table.

  “Made you coffee, babe,” he said, as if he’d never done it before.

  “You did?” Jude said, as if this were a surprise. “You’re the best.”

  “I know.”

  He shuffled to the shower while Jude stacked pillows, sat up and drank his coffee. Thinking, This is nice. Not overthinking. It took only a tiny bit of conscious effort to sit still and be a scientist of his own experience. Observe himself in his new habitat and record the facts.

  The human likes another human. The human is happy. The human is not anticipating the end of a relationship, making a plan and assembling a bug-out kit.

  This is nice for the human.

  The experiment shall continue.

  Tej fully embraced Full Frontal Fondue and added a little pre-party he called Pickle Hour. Tej had a thing for pickles. Jude was never allowed to throw away an empty jar because Tej would cram it with anything he found at the farmers’ market, pour brine on top, stick it in the fridge and see what happened. Every week, he spread out his creations and let the squad judge.

  Pickled grapes were a bizarre but surprising hit.

  “These make absolutely no sense,” Hewan said, three fingers deep in the mason jar, “and I can’t stop eating them.”

  Pickled strawberries were a mushy disaster. Okra and carrots were divine. Watermelon rind, not bad. Peaches, orgasmic. Rhubarb…

  “Let’s pretend this never happened,” Tej said, chucking the whole jar in the garbage.

  Serena and Giosué stopped by, claiming it was just for a pickle and a glass of wine, then staying four hours. Often Mireille Khoury came. Sometimes with a date, sometimes with Samson, who turned everyone into a cutesy-poo moron.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Jude said, pointing around the dog’s fawning fans. “Miri has already altered her will to make me Samson’s guardian.”

  “So if I’m found floating in Puget Sound,” Mireille said, “Jude is your first suspect.”

  As she laughed and joked and sassed in company, Mireille’s eyes were wistful on Tej, full of pride, but sadness. Tej, though, had nothing but love for his sister. He hugged her often. Cozied up to her shoulder and gave her the best of his charm.

  Tej, Jude came to realize, had his family shit worked out. He clocked his hours on the couch. He battled his demons and made his peace. Yes, it still hurt. Yes, the sadness occasionally liked to come have lunch. Yes, the anger and hurt invited themselves for sleepovers.

  No, they did not stay forever.

  Tej had learned not to make his family’s behavior into his character flaw, and he countered the episodic sadness with his work, his friendships and his obsession with hospitality. He liked to nurture and nourish people, which in turn nurtured and nourished him.

  Hospitality was a religion with Tej. If you stopped by for six seconds, he poured you a glass of water. If you stayed longer, he set out cheese and crackers or a little sliver of cake. He always had something going on the stove or in the oven. Always had coffee or tea. He wouldn’t entertain the idea of showing up at someone’s house empty-handed.

  “You are welcome here,” was an oath, not lip service.

  Jude wasn’t aware he’d been learning by osmosis until Serena came by one day and, without thought, he put out plates and glasses and made a little nosh. All kinds of snacks and nibbles now occupied his fridge and cabinets, foods he’d never stocked before. Cheese straws, gourmet biscuits, salted nuts and dried fruit. Spiked seltzer and lemon sodas. Little something-somethings that could be offered to company.

  “Well, this is genteel,” Serena said.

  “What?”

  “Offering me food and drink like a grown-up.”

  He smiled, his face warm. “Guess I’m picking up Tej’s good habits.”

  “Keep them,” she said. “And keep him. He’s sweet.”

  “He is.”

  “You guys are good together. You can feel it when you walk in.”

  When Jude next hosted Full Frontal Fondue, the cosmic Bert Gesundheit took a long, appraising look around the living room and said, “It’s changed in here.”

  “I got a new rug,” Jude said.

  “No, I mean the energy is different.”

  “Oh.”

  “Drastically different. And you, my friend, your aura is unrecognizable.”

  “It is?”

  “Dude, I’ve never felt you like this. You’re purple.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s enlightened. On the border of divine, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Stop talking about our sex life,” Tej said, coming by with a tray of drinks.

  Jude blushed, because the nights were religious. Raucous with sex that peeled the sheets off the bed.

  “You always look so surprised to see me in the mornings,” Tej said.

  “I guess I always figured when two guys fuck the way we do, one of them leaves when it’s over.”

  “Fucking can’t be for keeps?”

  Jude shrugged.

  Tej smiled. “Talking dirty can’t be profound? Porn can’t open your mind?”

  “I don’t know. When I met you, I had so many ideas and ways planted in my head and now they’re gone. Uprooted, and what’s left is a me I didn’t know.”

  “You’re having quite the year of self-discovery.”

  “I don’t like some of it.”

  “Do you like me?”

  Jude didn’t have words to say how much, so he tried to show it with his actions and his music, and in the way he let Tej into his body. Again and again the SS Thirtysomething Euphoria came into port, carrying a cargo of indescribable riches. The sheets crept off the bottom corners of the mattress. Tej’s hand crept along back of Jude’s neck. Tej’s hips in the small of his back. Tej’s dirty mouth filling the air with things that made Jude feel clean.

  “Jude’s bringing Tej to dinner,” Penny told Serena.

  “Shut up. When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Pictures or it didn’t happen.”

  “What should I make?”

  “Well, from what I heard, the man will eat anything.”

  “That’s what Jude said.”

  “Mom.”

  Penny hung up smiling. One of parenthood’s better set of problems was mortifying your adult children.

  Over the years, through a dozen boyfriends, Penny learned Jude had a type. He dated slight, slender men, usually fair-haired. Penny guessed he gravitated toward the polar opposite of Feño Paloma. Or maybe they gravitated toward him, what did she know?

  Tej Khoury was the polar opposite of Jude’s type. Broad-shouldered and hovering a couple inches over Penny’s tall son, he was darkly good-looking, wearing a carnal confidence like a second jacket.

  He’s bloody, Penny immediately thought, and then blinked at the kneejerk reaction. What the hell did that mean?

  Along with his self-assuredness, Tej came bearing a tangerine cake—“It’s his signature dessert,” Jude said—and a bottle of Lebanese wine he said was from his family’s vineyard.

  “Do you get a discount?” Cleon said, uncorking it.

  “Unfortunatel
y, no,” Tej said. “In fact, that bottle is stolen.”

  “Did you tell Tej about your sabotage missions in the liquor stores?” Penny asked Jude.

  Tej raised his eyebrows.

  “She made me a child activist,” Jude said. “Raising awareness for what was going on in Chile. Big part of that was carrying out community sabotage of Chilean goods. So I’m like eight years old and going with Mami to the liquor store. And while she’s chatting up the owner, I’m peeling labels off bottles of Chilean wine. Replacing them with stickers telling customers not to purchase the country’s products.”

  “We had gatherings called penas,” Cleon said, bubbling wine into four glasses. “All the kids would bring their stolen labels to show off.”

  “Like scalps,” Jude said.

  “No wonder my uncle made a killing in the seventies,” Tej said. “All that guerrilla warfare against the competition.”

  “Liquor store missions were a lot more fun than standing outside grocery stores, handing out fliers and asking customers not to buy Chilean grapes.”

  “Here we are,” Cleon said, handing out the drinks. “Jude, give us a toast?”

  “Arriba,” Jude said, and gestured for Tej to hold his glass high with the others.

  “Abajo.” All the glasses lowered.

  “Al centro.” Glasses put forward to clink.

  “Y adentro.” Everyone drank.

  “Now I check out your cookbooks and make silent judgment,” Tej said, sidling up to the shelf where Penny kept them. He glanced at her with a little smile. “I’m kidding.”

  “No, he’s not,” Jude said.

  “I don’t judge cookbooks, I steal them. Oh, hello, what’s this?” Tej took down Cucina Ebraica, a tome of Italian Jewish recipes.

  “My daughter’s boyfriend gave me that one,” Penny said. “He marked a page for me. Here. The Venetian fish soup. I’m supposed to try it.”